https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/h0077132

Dropping out of treatment: a critical review.

The Measurement of Family Activities and Relationships A Methodological Study

A survey of psychotherapy research findings is digested into 6 broad conclusions, and implications for practice and research are drawn from them. They are: (a) Psychotherapy causes clients to become better or worse adjusted than controls, (b) Control Ss improve with time as a result of informal therapeutic encounters, (c) Therapeutic progress varies with therapist warmth, empathy, adjustment, and experience, (d) Client-centered therapy is the only interview-oriented method that has been validated by research, (e) Traditional therapies are seriously limited in effectiveness and are relevant for a small minority of disturbances, and (f) Behavior therapies have considerable promise for enhancing therapeutic effectiveness and should be utilized or experimented with more widely.

Some implications of psychotherapy research for therapeutic practice.

Virtually every mental health professional has worked with patients who are overly dependent -- patients who have trouble asserting themselves within and outside therapy, alienate others with a pervasive pattern of clinging insecurity, and undermine their social and work relationships with frequent requests for help and reassurance. Such patients have always presented unique treatment challenges for therapists, but in today's managed care-driven environment, with its emphasis on time-limited therapy and cost-effective treatment, the overly dependent patient can be even more challenging. The Dependent Patient: A Practitioner's Guide presents an integrated, empirically based framework for diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of dependent psychotherapy patients. Rather than being bound to a single theoretical view, The Dependent Patient integrates ideas and findings from a broad array of theoretical perspectives. This book will be a valuable resource for any practitioner who works in an inpatient, outpatient, rehabilitation, or day treatment/partial hospitalization setting, regardless of the practitioner's background and level of training.

C L Winder

Papers

Dependency of patients, psychotherapists' responses, and aspects of psychotherapy.